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Undocumented and illegal immigrants pose an incalculable threat to our society. The balance of benefit to risk may be measured with complicated econometrics, but numbers cannot measure fear. Valuable workers and terrorists alike may be living within the borders of our country, state, or township. To sift out the illegals who build up our society from those who want to tear it down, we must develop an immigration roadmap that abides by the refrain: "Proper Immigration begins with Proper Emigration."

First, illegal emigrants disrespect their peers and their country. Undocumented emigrants insult their friends and colleagues who wait patiently for proper visas. My friend Victor and his family waited 10 years to be approved for a visa. His illegal contemporaries can never understand the struggle of working day in and day out anxiously awaiting a call that would demand his life restructuring within a six-month window. Victor now lives honorably in the mountains of Colorado, as millions of illegals fearfully cry out for the rights he has.

Second, illegal emigrants disrespect their country, while documented emigrants are more likely bring a copious exchange of cultural wealth. My friend Alfredo's emigration was a great loss to his local culture, but he honored his country by leaving legally. Alfredo studied music on a student visa, and then returned home to write his thesis about the Paraguayan harp tradition. Now, he lives legally in Texas, where he shares his love for music and Paraguay more often than not with people who would not be able to locate the country on a map.

In contrast with Alfredo's healthy expression of national pride, many undocumented emigrants leave their country without hope of return. This can drive some, but not all, toward radical forms of cultural suppression or militancy. Radical suppressors try to completely leave behind their home culture by assimilating into American culture. Radical militants emigrate as a vigilante expression of neo-colonization. Most immigrants fall somewhere between these two extremes, expressing elements from either dialectical pole depending on the circumstance. My friend Jerzy is a mild suppressor. He insisted that his wife get a drivers license and speak English so she would be less suspect. Jerzy also attends mass each Sunday at an ethnic mission far from home - going great lengths to hold onto his heritage. Jerzy would die for both his American children and his Eastern European family. Still

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